Probably an unpopular opinion, but hear me out…
I don’t really blame players for the poor performance of a team.
Remember who we’re dealing with. They could be very young, and as such have never been in a position of “perform or get the sack and don’t earn a penny”. They are kids, cushioned from having to do something you don’t want to by a 50k a week salary. It’s like telling Elon Musk to stop being a dick. Why should he? What can you do to sanction him? Threaten them with the sack, and they call their agent and get another huge salary from another employer without even breaking a sweat.
Even seasoned pros are unmanageable. They’ve grown up in a weird bubble of huge salaries for kicking a ball filled with air around twice a week for 90 minutes, surrounded by adoring fans every time they open a door. Ask them to do it three times in a week (what we in the real world call overtime) and it's like you've asked them to eat the family pet. And their managers go to the press and call such a demand "criminal" for f**ks sake!
It’s why so many footballers, even as grown men, behave like spoiled adolescents. Because that is what most of them are. They have no experience of the real world. Or of growing up. They've spent their lives in a priveleged bubble, insulated from reality. Don’t expect them to think like most of us who have had to claw our way through s**t jobs and even worse bosses, being shat on regularly and still having to smile and come back for more in order to pay the bills.
So don’t expect footballers to see the world as we do. They are a rarified breed. It’s easier to think of them as children. The kind of children who have tantrums in Sainsburys and who you "accidentally" clip with your elbow as you walk past them.
No, the source of all performance is the manager and the board. That’s it.
They choose the team, the tactics, the strategy – long and medium term. They allocate the funds and decide on investments.
It is their job to exploit the talents of those they recruit to the maximum. And to recruit personnel who fit in with their strategy.
The manager is paid big bucks to manage. Which means knowing how to deal with each player. Which buttons to push. Just as importantly, when to back off and allow them a personal win – a lesson any manager worthy of the title in any field learns very quickly. The manager decides how to make them gel into a team. How to approach each game. How to get every player to want to win for you.
But in football, instead we get examples like the idiot Ten Hag – demanding written apologies in the press from players who he feels have disrespected him (Sancho), or written apologies from clubs who he feels have said something he doesn’t like (Fulham). What does he do – frame them? Even as a non-player, hearing a grown man say that, I’d laugh in his face.
Or our own candidate for Scottish Independence (please – take him). He’s a winner, apparently. So OBVIOUSLY it cannot be his fault of we lose, It therefore MUST be the players. What a dick.
